I am Disappoint: No Love for Froyo on Galaxy S

Based on an anonymous post on the XDA Developer Forums, the reason behind the lack of a Froyo update for Samsung Galaxy S phones in the US appears to be because Samsung is greedy.

The following quote is the entirety of the message as it appears on the forums for your convenience (with added emphasis by me).

Hello,

I’m going to step across the NDAs and explain the issues behind the Android Froyo update to Samsung Galaxy S phones in the United States. I think most of you have come to this realization yourself now: the withholding of the Froyo update is a largely political one, not a technological one: Froyo runs quite well on Galaxy S phones, as those of you that have run leaked updates may have noticed.

To explain the political situation, first, a primer on how phone firmware upgrades work for carriers. When a carrier decides to sell a phone, a contract is usually written between the phone manufacturer and the carrier. In this contract, the cost of updates (to the carrier) is usually outlined. Updates are usually broken into several types: critical updates, maintenance updates, and feature updates. Critical updates are those that resolve a critical bug in the phone, such as the phone overheating. Maintenance updates involve routine updates to resolve bugs and other issues reported by the carrier. Finally, feature updates add some new feature in software that wasn’t present before. Critical updates are usually free, maintenance updates have some maintenance fee associated with them, and feature updates are usually costly.

In the past, most phone updates would mainly consist of critical and maintenance updates. Carriers almost never want to incur the cost of a feature update because it is of little benefit to them, adds little to the device, and involves a lot of testing on the carrier end. Android has changed the playing field, however – since the Android Open Source Project is constantly being updated, and that information being made widely available to the public, there is pressure for the phone to be constantly updated with the latest version of Android. With most manufacturers, such as HTC, Motorola, etc. This is fine and considered a maintenance upgrade. Samsung, however, considers it a feature update, and requires carriers to pay a per device update fee for each incremental Android update.

Now, here’s where the politics come in: most U.S. carriers aren’t very happy with Samsung’s decision to charge for Android updates as feature updates, especially since they are essentially charging for the Android Open Source Project’s efforts, and the effort on Samsung’s end is rather minimal. As a result of perhaps, corporate collusion, all U.S. carriers have decided to refuse to pay for the Android 2.2 update, in hopes that the devaluation of the Galaxy S line will cause Samsung to drop their fees and give the update to the carriers. The situation has panned out differently in other parts of the world, but this is the situation in the United States.

Some of you might have noticed Verion’s Fascinate updated, but without 2.2 : This is a result of a maintenance agreement Samsung must honor combined with Verizon’s unwillingness to pay the update fees. In short, Android 2.2 is on hold for Galaxy S phones until the U.S. carriers and Samsung reach a consensus.

Some might wonder why I didn’t deliver this over a more legitimate news channel – the short answer: I don’t want to lose my job. I do, however, appreciate transparency, which is why I'm here.

Having bought a Samsung Galaxy S phone back in August with the expectation that it would get the Froyo update soon, I am disappoint.

This is just one more annoyance added to my growing list of annoyances about Android-based phones and my Galaxy S phone in particular.

Bitch and moan about Apple being evil all you want, but even Apple doesn't do this to their users. I will never ever buy another Samsung Android phone again. This really rubs me the wrong way.

Update: People have been commenting that Android devices have gotten better OS update support than iPhones. This is simply not the case. The iPhone 3G came out ~6 months before the Android G1 and the G1 stopped getting updates (latest update was Android 1.6) looooooooong before the iPhone 3G stopped getting updates. Apple at least kept providing updates to the 3G through iOS 4.1.x, latest update being this past fall. So even though the iPhone 3G is older than the G1, it got OS updates until long after updates stopped coming for the G1. My point is that to even compare the G1 to the iPhone 3G in terms of time supported by new OS upgrades, the G1 would have to at least have Android 2.2 (which came out how long ago?? I mean, even 2.3 is out now). In other words: Apple pushes all OS upgrades for their iPhones for at least 2 years (length of a contract) while no Android handset maker ever has - the G1 got OS upgrades for what? 6 months?